According to a market forecast report released by Fortune Business Insights,
“The global learning management system (LMS) market size was USD 8.76 billion in 2019. It is projected to reach USD 38.10 billion by 2027, exhibiting a CAGR of 19.7% during the forecast period.”
The consistent growth of the worldwide LMS market depicts the enormous significance of learning management systems (LMS) for businesses and educational institutions.
The new-age LMS systems enable schools, colleges, and universities to protect teachers and students from coronavirus by conducting and continuing online classes. At the same time, businesses from various industries leverage cloud-based LMS solutions to boost the efficiency and productivity of employees by making employee learning and development (EL&D) an ongoing process. The number of educational institutions and business enterprises adopting cloud-based LMSs has been increasing consistently.
But many businesses and educational institutions fail to leverage LMS systems just because decision-makers believe in a slew of misconceptions and myths about LMS systems. In addition to holding back organizations, these LMS myths and LMS misconceptions influence the selection and comparisons of LMS solutions. That is why; it is time for decision-makers to debunk some of the common myths about LMS systems based on information collected from relevant and reliable sources.
Debunking 10 Commonly Believed Misconceptions and Myths about LMS Systems
LMSs are difficult to configure, maintain, and update
An organization needs to deploy, maintain, and manage onsite or on-premise LMSs through its own IT team. But an organization can leverage the benefits of cloud-based LMS solutions without deploying in-house IT professionals. The vendor will maintain and update the cloud-based LMS, along with providing technical assistance and support. Also, the cloud-based LMSs can be customized and configured according to an organization’s precise online learning or training needs in about one hour.
Learners must have technical skills to leverage LMS solutions
Most LMSs these days come with advanced features to personalize the learning experience and improve learner engagement. But the new-age LMSs are designed with an extensive focus on user experience. Both students and working professionals can access the cloud-based LMSs just like popular websites and web applications.
Also, they can access the LMS using a variety of devices – desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Leading vendors help organizations to ensure that each employee can use the LMS without putting extra time and effort by providing training and assistance. That is why; every business can use an LMS to make learners acquire knowledge and skills.
LMSs do not allow learners to interact with instructors
Many decision-makers believe that LMS solutions do not boost learning experience and learner engagement by facilitating learner-instructor interactions. But the new-age LMS solutions enable organizations to integrate self-paced learning and instructor-led learning models. Also, they allow learners to interact with instructors and other learners through discussion forums, chatting solutions, query corners, and leaderboards.
LMSs complicate administrative tasks
Many decision-makers still believe that they have to deploy multiple professionals to administer the LMS efficiently. But LMS helps organizations to save human resources by automating many administrative tasks. While configuring the LMS, the decision-makers can define access permissions and restrictions for individual administrators and learners.
Also, they can leverage the LMS to automate a slew of routine and repetitive administrative tasks – adding/removing learners, creating and launching online courses, allowing every learner to access only assigned courses, changing default LMS settings, generating various reports, and changing roles of individual users.
An organization can use an LMS only for eLearning purposes
Educational institutions can use a single K12 LMS to continue online classes and deliver eLearning courses to students from kindergarten to 12th grade. Likewise, the LMSs help businesses train and reskill employees by running a variety of EL&D programs. At the same time, new-age LMS solutions come with advanced features to automate many frontend and backend activities – managing learners, administering faculty staff, producing digital content, tracking progress, and generating reports. Many businesses these days use LMSs as a powerful tool to deliver customer service and deliver customer training.
LMS solutions do not facilitate learning experience personalization
At present, a personalized learning experience is one of the hottest trends in online education and corporate training. No organization can make a learner acquire, retain, and transfer knowledge without focusing on learning experience personalization. Many decision-makers believe in the myth that LMSs do not support and facilitate learning experience personalization. But the new-age LMSs leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to deliver personalized learning experiences according to the preferences and requirements of individual learners.
LMS systems do not come with features to boost learner engagement
No organization can make learners acquire, retain, and apply knowledge without focusing on learner engagement. Many decision-makers believe the LMS solutions do not help instructors or teachers to keep learners engaged. But the new-age LMS solutions keep learners engaged and motivated by supporting gamified learning experience.
They enable teachers to keep learners engaged using gamification options like coins and badges. Also, the teachers can improve learner engagement using some of the useful features provided by the LMS solutions – discussion forums, query corners, leaderboards, and nuggets. Each organization has the option to boost learner engagement by customizing the cloud-based LMS solutions.
LMS platforms require learning materials to be developed by third-party experts
Many decision-makers believe that they have to hire third-party experts to create content after installing the LMS. But most LMSs these days come with built-in content creation tools. The instructors and teachers can use these tools to create study materials and content seamlessly. Also, they can make the training materials more effective by combining a variety of digital content – ebooks, documents, videos, audio clips, podcasts, presentations, and infographics. Also, an organization can accelerate learning material creation by integrating the cloud-based LMS solutions with ready-to-access cloud-based digital libraries.
An LMS cannot be integrated with existing enterprise solutions
Many decision-makers believe that LMS solutions are designed as standalone software solutions. They cannot integrate the standalone software with existing business solutions. But the cloud-based LMS solutions support both customization and integration. An organization can customize the cloud-based LMS according to its precise EL&D strategies by adding or removing specific features. Also, it can integrate the LMS seamlessly with its enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and other business solutions.
LMS systems are too expensive for small businesses and startups
Many small businesses assume that they have to incur huge upfront and ongoing costs to onboard an LMS solution. But the small businesses and startups can curtail EL&D costs significantly by availing of a cloud-hosted LMS solution as software as a service (SaaS). They have the option to choose from many monthly plans provided by LMS solution providers. Also, there are options to pay only for the computing resources used by them. At the same time, the users can scale up or scale down the cloud-based LMS on demand according to their current EL&D needs.
The cloud-based LMS solutions help educational institutions to continue online classes and businesses to implement EL&D programs by overcoming constraints related to skills and resources. But many decision-makers still believe in a slew of misconceptions and myths about LMS systems. The decision-makers must debunk these commonly believed LMS myths to leverage the many benefits of this software solution.
